Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 Sole mate? : ODOR EATER

Odor Eater insoles were first introduced in the early seventies, and are manufactured by Combe. Combe sponsors a national contest held every year in Montpelier, Vermont, called “The Odor Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest”. Very pleasant …

16 Football Hall-of-Famer Long : HOWIE

Howie Long is a retired NFL defensive end who is now a sportscaster for Fox Sports Networks. Long tried some acting after retiring from the the NFL, and appeared alongside John Travolta in the 1996 action movie “Broken Arrow”. Howie’s son Chris is also a defensive end in the NFL, and son Kyle is an NFL guard.

Xi Jinping is the current paramount leader of China. In China, the term “paramount leader” has been used since the days of Mao Zedong to describe the person who holds several leadership offices concurrently. The paramount leaders have been:

Mao Zedong (1949 – 1976)

Hua Guofeng (1976 – 1978)

Deng Xiaoping (1978 – 1992)

Jiang Zemin (1992 – 2004)

Hu Jintao (2004 – 2012)

Xi Jinping (2012 – )

18 Crane pose, e.g., in yoga : ASANA

“Asana” is a Sanskrit word literally meaning “sitting down”. The asanas are the poses that a practitioner of yoga assumes. The most famous is the lotus position, the cross-legged pose called “padmasana”.

20 Hackneyed : OLD

Hackney is a location in London, and it probably gave its name to a “hackney”, an ordinary type of horse around 1300. By 1700 a “hackney” was a person hired to do routine work, and “hackneyed” meant “kept for hire”, and then “stale, uninteresting”. This morphed into a hackney carriage, a carriage or car for hire, and into “hack”, a slang term for a taxi driver or cab.

21 Western outfits : POSSES

Our word “posse” comes from an Anglo-Latin term from the early 15th century “posse comitatus” meaning “the force of the county”.

22 Tony winner Hagen : UTA

Uta Hagen was a German-born, American actress. Hagen married Jose Ferrer in 1938, but they were divorced ten years later after it was revealed that she was having a long-running affair with Paul Robeson. Her association with Robeson, a prominent civil rights activist, earned her a spot on the Hollywood Blacklist during the McCarthy Era. This forced her away from film, but towards a successful stage career in New York City.

23 Twin sister of Apollo : ARTEMIS

Artemis was an ancient Greek goddess, and the equivalent of the Roman goddess Diana. Artemis was also a daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. Among other things, she was the goddess of the hunt, and so often is depicted carrying a bow and arrows.

25 ___ polloi : HOI

“Hoi polloi” is a Greek term, literally meaning “the majority, the many”. In English, “hoi polloi” has come to mean “the masses” and is often used in a derogatory sense.

26 I.Q. test pioneer : BINET

The first usable intelligence test was invented by a French psychologist named Alfred Binet. Binet collaborated with Théodore Simon and together they produced the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale that is still in use today for IQ tests.

28 Year of the ___ (2008 or 2020) : RAT

The 12-year cycle in the Chinese calendar uses the following animals in order:

Rat

Ox

Tiger

Rabbit

Dragon

Snake

Horse

Goat

Monkey

Rooster

Dog

Pig

30 A political debate might be on this : C-SPAN

C-SPAN is a privately-funded, nonprofit cable channel that broadcasts continuous coverage of government proceedings. C-SPAN Video Library is an amazing online archive provided by C-SPAN that offers a complete audio and video archive of Congressional proceedings going back to 1987. Users can search the archive for free, by topic, speaker date and more. When the site was launched in 2010, the archive already contained 160,000 hours of programming. There is a is a section of the archive called “Congressional Chronicle” that is particularly easy to navigate.

34 Cousin of a crocus : IRIS

Iris is a genus of flowering plants that come in a wide variety of flower colors. The term “iris” is a Greek word meaning “rainbow”. Many species of irises are called “flags”. One suggestion is that the alternate name comes from the Middle English “flagge” meaning “reed”. This term was used because iris leaves look like reeds.

The crocus (plural “croci”) is a plant genus in the iris family. The term “crocus” ultimately derives from the Sanskrit word for “saffron”. Saffron spice comes from Crocus sativus, the “saffron crocus”.

44 Parts of some bonds : IONS

Chemical compounds consist of atoms that are attracted to each other in “chemical bonds”. Chemical bonds are primarily of two types: bonds resulting from electrostatic attraction between atoms with opposite charges (ionic and metallic bonds), and bonds formed through the sharing of electrons (covalent bonds).

45 Mud : JOE

It seems that no one really knows why we refer to coffee as “joe”, but we’ve been doing so since early in WWII.

49 Material for the Book of the Dead : PAPYRUS

The papyrus plant was commonly found in the Nile Delta of North Africa. The pith of the plant was used to make a thick, paper-like material on which one could write. This writing material, which became known as papyrus (plural “papyri”), became a competitor for the most popular writing surface of the day known as parchment, which was made from animal skins.

52 One of the Reagans : RON

Ron Reagan’s views couldn’t be any further from those of his father President Ronald Reagan, I’d say. Before the radio network Air America went bust, Ron had a daily 3-hour spot, and these days he makes frequent appearances on MSNBC. Young Reagan is quite the dancer, and for a while was a member of the Joffrey Ballet.

57 It’s boring : AUGER

An auger is a drill, a boring tool [Yawn].

60 Fingerprints, maybe : CLUES

In the world of criminology, there are three classes of fingerprints:

Patent prints are those which are obvious, easily spotted by the naked eye.

Impressed prints are those made when the fingertips apply pressure to a soft material or surface, such as the skin.

Latent prints are those that are invisible to the naked eye, but which can be detected using special equipment and materials.

61 Disregarding what’s written : AD-LIBBING

“Ad libitum” is a Latin phrase meaning “at one’s pleasure”. In common usage, the phrase is usually shortened to “ad lib”. On the stage, the concept of an ad lib is very familiar.

62 “The Family Circus” cartoonist : KEANE

Bil Keane was a cartoonist most associated with his strip “The Family Circus”. Once Bil sketched out the text and idea for the cartoon, he used to send it off to his son Jeff Keane who inked and colored the pictures for him in preparation for publication. In the storyline itself, the main characters are based on Bil’s own family. In fact, the son “Jeffy” in the story is based on Jeff, Bil’s son and longtime production assistant. After Bil passed away in 2011, Jeff took over as the author of the strip.

Down

1 Kit : FOX CUB

Kits are the young of several mammalian species, including the ferret and the fox. “Kit” is probably a shortened form of “kitten”.

3 Business casual restriction, typically : NO JEANS

Nîmes is a lovely city in the south of France. One of the claims to fame of the city is the invention of denim fabric. The French phrase “de Nimes” (from Nimes) gives us the word “denim”. Also, the French phrase “bleu de Genes” (blue of Genoa) gives us our word “jeans”.

5 Mystery writer Deighton : LEN

I used to walk my dog right past author Len Deighton’s house years ago, as we lived in the same village in Ireland (probably my only claim to “fame”). Deighton wrote the excellent espionage thriller “The IPCRESS File”, made was into a 1965 movie starring Michael Caine.

6 Flavor : SAPOR

“Sapor” is another word for “flavor, a quality that can be tasted”. “Sapor” is Latin for “taste, flavor”.

9 Small bit of work : ERG

An erg is a unit of mechanical work or energy. It is a small unit, with one joule comprising 10 million ergs. it has been suggested that an erg is about the amount of energy required for a mosquito to take off. The term comes from “ergon”, the Greek word for work.

10 Word from the Greek for “abyss” : CHAOS

In Greek mythology, Chaos was the first of the primeval gods born at the creation of the universe. Following Chaos came:

Gaia, the primordial goddess of the Earth

Tartaros, the primordial god of the Underworld

Eros, the primordial god of Love

Nyx, the primordial goddess of the Night

Erebus, the primordial god of Darkness

Aither, the primordial god of Light

Hemera, the primordial goddess of the Day

23 ___ 2600 (early video game device) : ATARI

The kids today probably don’t realize that we had a video game console back in the seventies, and it wasn’t a Nintendo nor was it a PlayStation. The Atari 2600 game system introduced the idea of separating out computing hardware (the console) from the game code (a cartridge). The same concept persists to this day, although cartridges have been displaced by discs and downloads.

27 “The Last Samurai” and others : EPICS

“The Last Samurai” is an entertaining film released in 2003 starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. The film tells the story of an American army officer (Cruise) and his relationship with samurai warriors in 19th century Japan.

31 Extras in “The Last Samurai” : NINJAS

The ninjas were around in Japan at the time of the samurai, but were a very different type of warrior. The ninjas were covert operatives, specializing in the use of stealth to accomplish their missions. As they were a secretive cadre they took on a mystical reputation with the public, who believed they had the ability to become invisible or perhaps walk on water.

33 Pastrami go-with : SWISS

“Swiss cheese” is a relatively generic term for a type of cheese produced in various countries and not necessarily in Switzerland. What they all have in common though, is a resemblance to the original Swiss Emmental cheese.

In the US, pastrami was originally called “pastrama”, and was a dish brought to America by Jewish immigrants from Romania in the second half of the the nineteenth century. The original name may have evolved from the Turkish word “pastirma” meaning “pressed”. “Pastrama” likely morphed into “pastrami” influenced by the name of the Italian sausage called salami.

39 Island in the West Indies : ANTIGUA

Antigua is an island in the West Indies, and is the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. These twin islands take their names from the Spanish for “ancient” and “bearded”.

“Hey Jude” was originally a song called “Hey Jules”, written by Paul McCartney. He wrote the original song for John Lennon’s son Julian, in an attempt to comfort the boy during his parents’ divorce. There’s a phenomenal coda in “Hey Jude” after the fourth verse that lasts for over four minutes.

Don McLean released his greatest hit, “American Pie”, back in 1971. Despite the song’s iconic position in the pop repertoire, McLean has been remarkably reticent about its origins and the meaning of the lyrics. We do know that it was inspired by the death of Buddy Holly in a plane crash (“the day the music died”). McLean has also told us that he first read about the death of his idol when delivering newspapers the day after the crash (“February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”). Although the lyrics have been analyzed and interpreted in depth by many, McLean’s stance remains that it is just a poem set to music.

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

42 Foreign term of endearment : CARA MIA

“Cara mia” is Italian for “my beloved” or “my dear”.

49 In itself : PER SE

50 British luxury car, informally : ROLLS

Charles Rolls founded the Rolls-Royce auto manufacturing company along with his partner Henry Royce in 1906. Sadly, Rolls died just a few years later in a plane crash. Rolls was a pioneering aviator. He became the first Briton to die in a powered aircraft crash when the tail of his plane broke off during a flying display.

59 “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” network : TBS

Samantha Bee is a comedian from Toronto who found fame as a correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” starting way back in 2003. Bee left “The Daily Show” in 2015 to host her own late-night talk show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” on TBS.